Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 11 September

Boardwalk Empire Episode 1 (Scorsese, 2010)

An art­icle that I always wanted to write for Widescreen at RNZ but doesn’t really fit the format any­more is about major dir­ect­ors get­ting involved with prestige TV. In recent years we have had film­makers like David Fincher (House of Cards, Mindhunter), Ridley Scott (Raised by Wolves), Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead) and Rian Johnson (Poker Face) shoot the pilots for series as well as exec­ut­ive pro­duce the rest.

Of course, many dir­ect­ors got their starts in tv – Steven Spielberg fam­ously with Columbo – and Quentin Tarantino dir­ec­ted an epis­ode of ER as a lark, but the chance to be involved with a longer story, as well as set­ting the visu­al look and tone of a series, is a big attrac­tion for dir­ect­ors who you might think are accus­tomed to fea­ture film budgets.

A very recent example is Fernando Meirelles – dir­ect­or of the 2002 Brazilian smash City of God as well as The Constant Gardener and The Two Popes – and now the excel­lent Sugar on Apple TV+ (which we will con­sider here at a later date). And one of my favour­ites – now that I’m think­ing about popes – is Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope which appears to have dis­ap­peared from loc­al stream­ing services.

Today I want to men­tion one of my favour­ite Martin Scorsese films, the pilot epis­ode for the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. From memory – I haven’t rewatched – this 73 minutes is a beau­ti­ful, flow­ing, col­our­ful intro­duc­tion to the world of Prohibition era Atlantic City. It suc­cess­fully intro­duces the milieu, the char­ac­ters and the ten­sions. Aided by a ter­rif­ic script from Sopranos exec­ut­ive pro­du­cer Terence Winter and cine­ma­to­graphy from Oscar-winner Stuart Dryburgh, this pilot epis­ode has what so much tele­vi­sion doesn’t have – propulsion.

It was so good that the prom­ise it made kept me going through three sea­sons before I real­ised that it was nev­er going to reach those heights again.

That’s why this isn’t a recom­mend­a­tion for the whole five sea­sons – I didn’t fin­ish it. But for the first sea­son – espe­cially that first epis­ode – it was about as enter­tain­ing as TV got in that period.

One final men­tion for the incred­ible cast of char­ac­ter act­ors – many wooed by the idea this might be anoth­er Sopranos, I bet, as well as the chance of work­ing with Marty. Steve Buscemi got a well-deserved lead role as “Nucky” Thompson, the cor­rupt politi­cian at the centre of all the shenanigans. Kelly MacDonald is the inno­cent who gets caught up in it all. There’s also Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Kenneth Williams, Shea Wigham, Gretchen Mol, Paz de la Huerta and a young Stephen Graham as a young Al Capone.

If you fin­ished Boardwalk Empire, make a case for me to go back to it because I’ve got an itchy trig­ger fin­ger now that I’m think­ing about it again.

Where to watch Boardwalk Empire

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon

Australia: Streaming on Binge

Canada: Digital pur­chase from Apple

Ireland & UK: Streaming on SkyNow

USA: Streaming on Max